Thursday, January 01, 2009

Alexander the Great

This is unfortunately the season of euthanasias. Some animals can't make it to the new year, some families finally have children and extended family all in the same place, some people are finally home enough to be able to make a decision. Regardless, no euthanasia is every easy for me.

I hate being with people who have spent a lifetime with a pet and now have to say goodbye. I was lucky when I first started working and had a long string of "perfect" euthanasias, where I was able to get the vein quickly and the animal died gracefully. I have since had my share of euthanasias that have not gone well, including some where the animal has had such a low blood pressure or such scarred veins from repeated treatments and diagnostics that I was ready to cry from the difficulty of doing an IV injection without even considering the circumstances.

I'm hoping that things will be better this year. I have been a vet for over 6 months now, and the very sharp learning curve of the first year is slowly starting to level out. That said, I diagnosed new things I'd never seen before even in the last week, and done surgeries that I'd never done before (removing a needle from a cat's intestines).

The most important thing that happened here in the last week though was that we have added a brand new member to our family - a 9 week old kitten named Alexander. Our apartment is about as full as we can cram it, with 2 adults and 2 cats now. We're going to have to move before we can consider getting another pet at this point.

Since Monday, we have gone through stages of hissing that today culminated in chasing one another across the apartment and wrestling with true play and enjoyment. I think Oberon (the older cat) is finally starting to come around. We hope that soon they will both hang out in bed with us on our lazy mornings and we can have a lot more purring!

1 comment:

Lippy said...

This is one of the many reasons I admire what you do. I had to put my cat down in 2002. He was 16, and was born in my bed, while I was in it. It was so hard, I still miss him. My brother's cat is in the cusp. He is trying to figure out the right time. It must be very hard to watch both the people and animals go through it.